


Teeth and Bones

by Blurble



Category: Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Beautiful
Genre: Fairytale world building, Gen, Witches and their cats, Witches and their houses, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28067682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blurble/pseuds/Blurble
Summary: Baba Yaga was always hungry.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 40
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Teeth and Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ozsaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozsaur/gifts).



Baba Yaga was a changeling child, but she only found that out later.

She had some memories of the hut her human parents had lived in, the fire that never had enough wood, the wind coming through the gaps between the beams. She remembered a vague feeling of unease, like she didn't fit in quite right, and she remembered that she never seemed to be able to do what they wanted from her. Mostly she remembered the hunger.

As far as Baba Yaga could tell, she had always been hungry.

When Baba Yaga was about four in human years, her human parents abandoned her. Maybe they were tired of the ways she was wrong. Maybe they just ran out of food to feed an extra mouth. Baba Yaga didn't know, because they didn't tell her. They just took her one day to the woods, and told her to go look for mushrooms. And then they left.

Perhaps Baba Yaga would never have known, if she'd been a normal human child. Perhaps she would have wandered lost in the woods and imagined her parents searching desperately for her as she got colder and colder and more and more tired. The snow would have covered her like a blanket.

But Baba Yaga wasn't an ordinary child, and she didn't get lost searching for mushrooms. She knew exactly where she was, and was able to find her way back to the precise spot where she had parted ways with her parents. She saw that they weren't there. She understood why.

She stood there at the edge of the woods. Her parents couldn't afford a coat for their fast-growing child. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled.

She turned and walked back into the woods.

* * *

In the woods was the house.

The house is an old monster. It has a fence made of bones, or rather, it has what looks like a fence made of bones. The fence is its mouth, the ground within the fence its maw. As for the house within those grounds, with sturdy walls and a warm glow from the fireplace visible through the windows? ...Well. There are fish in the deep sea that dangle friendly lights in the dark, dark depths, as if to guide the way of weary travelers. Following the lights of the house and following the lights of those fish lead to similar fates. 

Baba Yaga came to the house as if called, as happens to children lost in the woods. But when she placed her hand upon the bony gate to open it, the house shuddered.

"You are not a human child!" It said, with disappointment. "You are not good to eat".

This was the first Baba Yaga learned of the matter.

The house tried to stand up and shake her off. But Baba Yaga held fast to the bony gate, even as the house flew angrily deeper into the woods. The branches scratched at her and the teeth of the gate grew slick with monster saliva but she simply slipped her bony hands and feet through the gaps and hugged with all her might, so that the house could not shake her off.

Finally, exhausted, it landed in a clearing.

"Fine, then," it said, grumpily. "You have tamed me, I guess. Make yourself useful and sweep up, why don't you, my floorboards are all itchy with dust."

* * *

"So what am I, if I'm not a human?" Baba Yaga asked the house.

She was growing at a very rapid pace ever since she'd discovered she didn't need to grow at human speed at all. She knew on some instinctive level that she could stop growing, too, if she wanted. But right now she was very long and gangly all over, so she planned to keep going.

"How should I know?" The house said. It was, Baba Yaga had discovered, a very petulant house.

It didn't even know very much about itself. It was Baba Yaga who discovered that she could find things in the house, if she thought about wanting them hard enough. The things produced in this way were not entirely real, so the food was not filling and the drinks did not quench her thirst. But the books of magic contained real spells in them.

"Then you must be a witch," the house proclaimed, after Baba Yaga filled the house with color-changing smoke from her experiments. "I expect your familiar will show up any day now."

"Why can't you be my familiar?" Baba Yaga asked, which offended the house so badly it did not speak to her at all for the next three days.

But it was right, of course. The next week the cat showed up, entirely uninvited.

It was so scrawny you could see its bones outlined through its mangy fur, and it had fleas, to boot. Baba Yaga took an instant dislike to it and tried to hiss it away, but it ignored her, settling itself down pointedly next to the fire. 

" _I_ like it," the house said, with a certain amount of malicious glee. "And it's clearly your familiar, I could see the resemblance at once."

For all its protestations, the house was too fond of strays, Baba Yaga thought. But when the cat curled up by her feet at night she didn't kick it.

* * *

After the awkward gangly phase Baba Yaga grew curves, which horrified her. She concentrated with a focused attention on her body until, under her angry glare, it let itself sag into a less ridiculous shape. 

"Much better," Baba Yaga thought. Her skin was finally losing its smoothness, turning soft and wrinkled, a development that pleased her so much she decided to try flying again. 

She'd tried it early in her magical experimentation, and had successfully enchanted the house's carpets to go wildly off into the air, spreading out in all four directions. It had taken months to hunt them all down again.

But now she thought that her mistake was using rugs for the experiment. Rugs were too flighty. She spent the morning tapping on other objects around the house.

Finally she found that the mortar was steady and reliable and would fly where she wished it without fuss.

"What do you need a mortar for?" Baba Yaga asked the house.

The house scoffed. "To grind the bones of little children, of course," it said.

Baba Yaga scraped a little bit of the dust off the side off the mortar with her finger and licked it experimentally.

That's how she discovered she had an allergy. Well, after the dry heaves and the sweats were over, when she asked the house for books with answers. It was a not uncommon affliction for witches, a goodness intolerance. It could be overcome by brewing a complicated potion stewed in moonlight, to be consumed with the meal. Otherwise the witch would have gas, and cramps, and pangs of conscience (a vestigial organ of witches, prone to inflammations).

"You should still be able to eat evil people just fine," the cat said. 

* * *

The woods were not a single wood in a single location, but a magical entity stretched through every wood everywhere, and the house had an instinct for where to camp next to find its prey. It had to modify the instinct, now that it was eating for three, and with dietary restrictions.

Their first real meal once the winter ended they almost bungled quite badly. It was a little boy, eight years old, totally indigestible. The house spent the entire time salivating and wanting to eat him, the cat had to bring it a steady stream of rats to snack on just to keep it quiet. It paid off in the end, because the boy took the Baba Yaga's witch-candle with him to the Lord's house on his way to save his sister. The Lord was having a feast with his friends, and each of them was very fat and delicious, when the witch-light ate them all. And they didn't so much as stir up a burp.

After that the house acquiesced to the new feeding plan. It didn't require much change in tactics. Little children wandering alone in dark forests tended to have more than one edible target nearby when returned on their way with a witch-light.

* * *

A girl came, with a name that started with V, or B. Sometimes it was L or T instead, they started to run together eventually.

Her stepmother had sent her. 

As usual Baba Yaga took advantage of the opportunity to have someone else attend to the house's endless chores. The girl was very good- she practically had "indigestion" written on her forehead- and cleaned the yard, swept the floors, cooked supper, and washed the linens. Baba Yaga spent the day snoring away blissfully.

That evening they had a reasonable supper. The next day the girl did other chores. Really it was a bit suspicious how many chores she did. 

Baba Yaga was always a bit concerned about some other witch usurping her house. Witch's houses were rare and precious.

"How have you managed to carry out the work so quickly?" she asked the girl.

The girl shifted her eyes away and said, "My mother's blessing helped me."

She wasn't telling the whole truth, but she didn't smell like lies, either.

"A blessing!" the house complained. "Those make me sneeze!" 

It was definitely about to kick up a fuss. Baba Yaga sighed, thinking of how well the chores had gotten done.

"You'd better be gone," she said, "I won't have people with blessings in my home."

She sent the girl off with a witch-light. Her stomach growled as she watched her go.

She hoped the girl (and, more importantly, the witch-light) would get home before supper-time.

* * *

The truth is, Baba Yaga was always hungry.

One time one of the children talked the cat into betraying her for a bit of cheese. That girl had been plump, and her mother probably plumper, but instead Baba Yaga was left with nothing to eat but mushrooms.

"If it was you, you'd do the same," the cat said, licking its lips for the last crumbs of cheese. 

The house snickered. "Like witch, like cat," it said.

"Shut up, you bottomless stomach," Baba Yaga grumbled. It was true, though, and a sore point. Almost no one ever brought her food.

Once, when they were camping out in a large town instead of the forest — which was rare, but the house had instincts it followed, and sometimes it wanted to brood with its legs tucked away under it somewhere bustling, in the same way that sometimes it grew an extra chimney for no reason Baba Yaga could tell — in any case, once there had been a girl who brought her plates of little fried donuts and called her "Grandma".

Baba Yaga didn't fantasize about eating her even once. OK, maybe once. But mostly she hoped the little girl would have a normal happy family and no one would get eaten.

No one comes to find Baba Yaga because they have a normal happy family. Not ever.

Not even in town, with the house's feet hidden away and the fence pretending to be wood. Not even if their donuts are sweet and perfectly fried golden.

...The girl's evil stepfather was delicious. Baba Yaga saved his screams and licked them up in bits and pieces. 

But sometimes she _did_ rather miss the donuts.

**Author's Note:**

> I loved the prompt! I hope you enjoy =)  
> Thank you to HopefulNebula for the beta.


End file.
